Open wounds
by Valeriasg1
Summary: Awfully clichéd. Sam and Jack sort things out after what happened in Threads.


Title: Open wounds

Author: Vale

Rating: G

Classification: a little angst, h/c, S/J

Summary: Awfully clichéd. Sam and Jack sort things out after what happened in Threads.

Spoilers: Threads

Disclaimers: All current and former member of the SCG don't belong to me but to someone a lot richer than me.

Author's note: This was originally conceived as a longer piece. I had troubles linking the two parts, so I decided to make two stand alones of it.

Many thanks to lj userdemonrattie and lj userseramercury for their great beta job. You rule girls!

Jack made his way through his crowded house to his living room, where two members of his former team and General Hammond sat talking on his couch. The three beer bottles dangling from his fingers clinked loudly against one another as he bumped shoulders with a young airman.

"Sorry." He murmured, and realized that the man didn't look familiar at all. He sighed as he took in the amiably chatting people. He really doubted all of them knew Jacob personally. Someone probably genuinely wanted to pay homage to the General. To others it was just another line to their list of important presences. They were the huge honking flag team, after all. And the leader was his daughter.

He looked in the direction Sam had disappeared to minutes earlier and spotted her on the back porch. She had managed to find a little silent corner for herself, but that couldn't have been too hard. Wherever she went, people around her seemed to part like waters in the Red Sea, avoiding her eyes and staring only when they thought it was safe.

He watched her shift her weight and lean against the banister, her head low and her back hunched as she spoke into her mobile. She nodded a couple of times and eventually ended the conversation, dropping the phone in her purse.

He caught her rubbing the back of her neck and he briefly wondered whether she had always had that habit or it was something she had picked up from him along the years.

"Carter." She looked surprised enough to see him standing right in front of her. He didn't really know what to say, so he settled on offering her a beer and wait for some kind of reaction. Her teeth sank deeper into her lower lip as she gingerly took the bottle from his hands. Her eyes drifted down to the tightly sealed cap for a moment and then traveled up to his face, sadness and doubt lingering in their blue depths.

Ok, maybe that wasn't such a good plan.

They hadn't talked since the night Jacob died, when he'd ordered her to go home with Daniel and call him if she wanted to. Anytime, for any reason.

She left Daniel's house early the following morning and never called Jack. She'd been distant ever since. They'd stood shoulder to shoulder at the funeral in Arlington, but no words were exchanged except for a brief nod and a weary smile.

He and SG-1 knew she needed her time alone to take in her loss, yet the sight of her so low and far away tugged incessantly at their hearts. Especially his.

"Who was it on the phone?"

She winced visibly. "Pete."

Right. She had arrived alone and he hadn't seen Pete around. He seemed to recall he wasn't at the memorial either. Okay, he had to admit, he had looked specifically for Pete and hadn't seen him anywhere.

"He, uh…stuck in Denver?"

With a rapidity of movement he hadn't seen in her in days, she popped the bottle top open on the edge of the banister.

"Kind of." She offered and proceeded to drink the foam that was threatening to spill from the bottle. She licked her lips clean and took a long swig before resuming the conversation. The golden beer flowed soothingly down her throat, and gave her a few extra moments to gather a little of the courage she hadn't been able to muster up in a week.

"We aren't seeing each other anymore. I broke off the engagement."

"Oh." He croaked, his mouth suddenly dry, and he swallowed uncomfortably. His gaze wandered down to where her left hand was hanging limply at her side. No ring.

"Oh." She echoed, eyebrows raised, and the hand immediately disappeared into a pocket, as if suddenly aware of its nakedness.

"I'm sorry." Jack flinched at his own words. He knew even he could do better than that.

"Don't be. It's for the best. I think." She sighed. "Probably we weren't just right…for each other. He…" Sam's words died on her lips, burned by the memory of General O'Neill and Agent Johnson having a barbecue in his backyard. The same backyard she was facing from her position.

The fear of a gentle, sympathetic rejection outweighed the urge to open up to him. The word humiliation didn't exist in Sam Carter's vocabulary, and she wasn't looking forward to make the addition just yet.

"He bought a house. Without asking me first." And it was the truth, but also something that Jack…

"You already told me that." Precisely.

"I don't know, he…he kept babbling on about the furniture, the backyard, and he wanted to get a dog…"

"What's wrong with dogs?"

Her eyes narrowed noticeably. "Sir…"

"Sorry. Go ahead."

"He looked so happy, and it just felt wrong. As if I didn't belong there with him." He nodded in understanding and gently took the beer from her hands, bringing the bottle to his own lips. He tasted warm beer and lipstick, and he stored the flavor in the chaotic whirlwind of sensations of the past few weeks.

"I'd had this nagging thought for quite a while, but I guess it took me that to realize my heart wasn't really in it."

"Sounds familiar." Sam blinked, perplexed, and followed his gaze to where Kerry Johnson was talking to Hammond.

"She…uh…dumped me."

It was her turn to do the impression of a goldfish as he struggled to find the right words to answer her unspoken question.

"Let's say my heart wasn't really in it, too. She just picked up on that before I did."

"Smart woman. Not everyone makes CIA." She found it surprisingly easy to do the skilled agent justice now that she didn't feel threatened by her presence anymore. She mentally kicked herself. She wasn't supposed to see her as a rival.

"Not everyone can blow up a sun, either." He was glad to see the shadow of a smile find its way to her lips.

"I'm never going to hear the end of it, am I?"

"Probably not." He reached out to touch her cotton clad arm briefly, oblivious to the several pair of eyes that had been following the exchange from a few steps away.

"Why don't we go inside with the guys? They're pretty worried for you, too, you know." What little weight she had gained during the increased time she spent in her lab was gone, and she looked skinnier than she had in a long time, her face unusually pale and sunken.

"I needed some time to sort things out. I still do."

"Carter, I know it's hard. And I'm not blaming you for wanting to cope with it on your own. Just don't forget there are people out there who care about you. I meant it when I said you could call, or drop by whenever you felt like it. And the same goes for Daniel and Teal'c."

He'd been one step short of calling Cassie before he decided against it. She would be home from college in less than a month, and he hoped her special bond with Sam would succeed where they all had failed.

"I'll keep that in mind." They fell silent as he ushered her inside and to the sitting room, where three heads snapped up and smiled as she made her hesitant entrance. General Hammond stood up and enveloped her in a fatherly hug. It felt good to be once again with all of them.

Jack left her side and eased himself into an armchair, watching Sam interact with a bubblier than ever Daniel. Four-syllable words started flowing out of her mouth and the corner of his mouth quirked up in a satisfied smile.

She sat squeezed awkwardly between Daniel and Teal'c on the too small sofa, balancing a bowl of cheese nachos on her thighs and holding a tuna and tomato sandwich that had been unceremoniously shoved in her hands.

Happy anecdotes of times long gone and the more painful ones of Jacob mixed together into bittersweet memories, and in tentative bites, she finished off her sandwich. Jack's eyes met Teal'c's, and the Jaffa bowed his head in approval. He returned the nod, feeling slightly better knowing she would at least go home with something in her stomach.

He fiddled with his beer, his mind returning insistently to what had transpired in their earlier conversation. He found himself in the same position of two years earlier. But Anubis had been defeated, and the Jaffa were building a new world for themselves.

His thoughts drifted to all those who had been lost along the way, Jacob being only the latest, and probably not the last, of the endless list.

Earth wasn't in immediate danger anymore. Waters were still. And maybe, just maybe, there was still hope for something beautiful.


End file.
